updated 02:25 pm EDT, Mon March 24, 2008

Seagate on SSD Lawsuit

Seagate may pull a lawsuit as its trump card if solid-state drives (SSDs) threaten to undermine its conventional hard drive business, company head Bill Watkins has said in a new interview with Fortune. The executive alleges that both Intel and Samsung are violating patents dealing with the interaction between computers and storage and that a formal complaint could follow that would either force them to change their technology or else compensate Seagate for their purported infringement.

Neither Intel nor Samsung has commented on the validity of the claims, which ay hinge on substantial price drops for SSDs. Watkins argues that this is unlikely and dismisses notebooks that rely heavily or exclusively on solid-state drives, such as Apple's MacBook Air or Lenovo's ThinkPad X300. Flash drives that are both as fast and reliable as rotating hard disks often cost nearly $1,000 more than their counterparts at the same physical size.

The price of solid-state drives is expected to plummet in 2008 even as capacities increase. Samsung will offer a 128GB SSD before July that will effectively replace the 64GB SSD in use by several notebook makers, while 80GB and 160GB Intel drives should also quickly drop the price of SSDs due both to technology improvements and a need to clear excess supply. Toshiba is also shipping an inexpensive 128GB drive.

re: jameshays

don't worry jameshays

The market players in our economy will pick it up soon enough. Hopefully not before I go and buy a house this summer ;-). No, we need to worry more about trial lawyers and the crackpot politicos they lobby for/throw money at (think Pelosi and her FISA avoidance). Both of these groups represent what is truly undermining our economic growth, liberties, and advancement.

Re: don't worry

Yeah, we gots to worry about Pelosi and her crackpots! For we know Bush would do nothing to destroy our civil liberties (as long as we don't mind giving them up for 50-100 years).

Of course, you're complaining about trial lawyers in this when none are involved. And, in fact, you have no clue as to the nature of the patent claim, and, as such, have no idea whether it's a warranted claim.

But, hey, someone's thinking of suing someone associated to apple, so they must be evil!

2 Cents- Don't Sue Me!

I agree we are too suit-happy, but I don't think we can write this off to "liberal" sensibilities. The corporations and attorneys in this dispute are NOT liberal. They're NOT on what we often CALL welfare but ARE beneficiaries of a legal welfare system that supports them. They benefit from the recent tax cuts for the very wealthy. They create the laws that favor their interests. They stand to gain by this back and forth.....and the consumer (who USED to be a citizen) will simply pay more.

FISA was working pretty well; there ARE provisions for retroactive warrants. The only thing that was missing was support for the telecoms, keeping them safe from lawsuits. The "swift boat" ads attacking your senators and congressfolk for not supporting your rights were SPONSORED by those big corporations and their attorneys who are afraid of getting their butts in a vice. It ain't about patriotism; it IS about the $. These are NOT liberal-minded folks, but rather people who have a vested interest in continuing the constant legal challenges and in protecting corporations before citizens.

So....returning to the thread, the legal system will sort this out.... and the rich attorneys will benefit by getting paid and recent large tax cuts for the extra rich and from corporate loopholes. Spewing "liberal" or "conservative" as an epithet isn't beneficial. Better to address the issues, methinks.

Out of touch

It is easy to point your finger at trial lawyers. They, however, are merely a symptom not the problem. People merely pay them to do a job that the law allows them to do. Trial lawyers often keep the system honest.

Instead, look solely at the corporate lobbyists (who typically are not trial lawyers) who pay politicians to write laws that favor established corporate interests. Patent laws do just that. Companies like Seagate often patent technology not to bring them to the market, but to protect their established business models. I suspect most college educated people couldn't understand most patent statutes. That is by design.

Another problem is that judges often fail to throw out clearly frivolous lawsuits. They have the power to do so, but there is greater benefit for them by letting these matters go to court.

Finally, I hardly see how the FISA relates to this conversation. The government should be afraid of the people, not the other way around. The FISA is a horrible piece of legislation designed to keep the powerful powerful and the weak weak.

You write, "The market players in our economy will pick it up soon enough. Hopefully not before I go and buy a house this summer ;-). No, we need to worry more about trial lawyers and the crackpot politicos they lobby for/throw money at (think Pelosi and her FISA avoidance). Both of these groups represent what is truly undermining our economic growth, liberties, and advancement."

lol testudo response

Oh, that worked wonders. It's funny what a little inflammatory rhetoric will do. I guess we all now know Testy's just another bushy-hater who takes any chance to to bash him that he can.

Notice that I was merely pointing out that these trial lawyers, many who are party to petty lawsuits as mentioned in the article, have many in power beholden to them. Pointing out the FISA situation was merely an example of just how much.

We all know Congress, just as the Senate already has, would reapprove such a critical program, except one of their main cashflows is salivating from the legal fees they'd get from those whose previous actions FISA would protect.

And before Testy hops on that one, let's not forget that much of the blogosphere coverage on the range and scope of such agencies' listening power. From someone who knows someone invloved with the 'listening in,' here's the way it works- You have two ways of attracting the notice of survelance. 1- contact foreign numbers that are known to be connected with terrorist activities. 2- (and this isn't a public certainty) Include key words in you conversation that a computer, which is merely listening, not recording, picks up on and then flags you for later investigation.

I don't know about you, but i don't usually talk about "kill"ing the "president" or setting a "bomb" or how to "highjack" a "plane" while working for "Al-Queda" and posing as an "imam," etc. etc. While talking in arabic too.

Until militant Islamic terrorism is less of a threat, I don't particularly care if someone listens in with a coversation I have with my girl or family. But then, if that's all there is to it, then they wouldn't be.

idiots

From someone who knows someone invloved with the 'listening in,' here's the way it works- You have two ways of attracting the notice of survelance. 1- contact foreign numbers that are known to be connected with terrorist activities. 2- (and this isn't a public certainty)...

So your friend of a friend says. Then again, who says this won't change? Esp. since this has changed dramatically in the last 10 years, under no control by anyone, apparently.

And since the FBI can just file a letter with a telecom saying "We want everything here" without even have a judge look at it, who says they aren't listening to everything?

Until militant Islamic terrorism is less of a threat, I don't particularly care if someone listens in with a coversation I have with my girl or family. But then, if that's all there is to it, then they wouldn't be.

And who decides when that dies away? And based on all past experiences with every aspect of gov't, what makes you think that, if militant Islamism disappeared tomorrow, that they'd say "Hey, now we can return you your rights".

And why limit it to this, then? You should be campaigning to have the gov't monitor listen in on all your calls, read your mail, record every conversation you have, know everywhere you go, everything you do.

Because there's terrorists out there! We need to keep our freedoms safe by abandoning them in the name of 'security'!

There used to be a right to privacy in this country. Now its "Prove your innocent because you could be guilty". The US used to be a shining beacon of hope to the rest of the world. Now they look like just a bunch of hypocrites.

"enemy combatants". "Soldiers" captured are not guaranteed to be released until the war is over (has always been that way) and do not have any rights to a trial. The "war" against radical islam and associated terrorists is not a law enforcement action. It is a literal war. Too bad too may Americans and Westerners don't understand that. The ilitant Islamicists certainly do understand it.

"testudo" is great at making contentless sound bites but is really lacking in any sort if support for his statements.

"Where's the Beef" testudo? Show me explicit examples of how the things you mentioned violate any US Citizen's civil rights.

You're right

I only saw where it mentioned it as an example of a laptop that uses an SSD."

He doesn't trash the Air, he only uses it as an example of a case where an HDD version of a really small portable is perhaps a bit of a luxury in cost, but the SSD version price is not really sane.

I really like SSD in my iPhone because of what it does for battery life. I'm fine with the HDD in my Air because there are many more factors at work in battery life in the Air. But then you notice HDD-based iPod classics get similar iPod-function battery life to iPhones.

I know it happens, but I've thrice in 22 years had a hard drive fail on me -- and two were controllers, not the drives; only one drive, a head crash due to firmware issues, a Seagate as a matter of fact, replaced in two days by Seagate with fixed firmware, and I had everything backed up and was down maybe two hours -- and never had an HDD iPod, even with the usual rigors of iPod use, including one drop to concrete and one flying toss onto the road during a mugging, fail on me.

This is something I think effects consumers less than it does hardware designers.

Aside chadpengar, although what this has to do with storage media format I don't know, being afraid of your own shadow as you obviously are will kill a lot sooner than any terrorist attack.